 to the June 12th, 2019 meeting of the community resource committee of the town council, it's 233. So there are a gen does, which I think are in the back, with a list of topics, but generally we're gonna do a call to order, then we're gonna public comment, continue discussion of goals, discussion of a meeting that I participated in with the zoning subcommittee, discussion of the percent for art proposal, discussion of elements of the master plan, and then business not anticipated 48 hours before this meeting. We're gonna do all of this in two hours. So some of you are here to speak about specific issues, so if you don't mind, we'll try to, we'll try to get you as quickly as possible for the percent for art folks. Yep. Yeah, we can do that. So what we'll do is we'll do public comment, then actually, we might even just move, if it's okay with you all, we can even do percent for art. Because, yeah. So let's see if there's any open public comment. Oh, I'm sorry, we need a minute to take it. Yeah, I started. Okay. So let's see if there's any just general public comment, I see none. And then we are actually am going to go, we are going to go off schedule just to, because we have 2% for art proposers or advocate authors, whatever the right word is. So I think we'll go right into that discussion. So we're gonna move number five up to number three. So if you guys wanna come forward, you can talk about your proposal. So just for information, if you're watching at home, this was discussed briefly, mildly briefly at the last town council meeting in this matter of percent for art was referred to both the community resource committee and to the finance committee for further discussion. So if I may, you may wanna, if I may summarize, there was a percent for art bylaw that was passed by town meeting, but it got stuck in the state legislature as I understand it. And never has been implemented for various reasons, but why don't you guys go ahead and explain, introduce yourselves and explain. Quickly summarize, I'm Eric Brody, I'm the current chair of the Amherst Public Art Commission and with me is Bill Caysen, the incoming chair at the beginning of July 1. Just to summarize where we are and why we're here. Yes, you're correct that there was a percent for art bylaw that was passed two years ago by town meeting that went to the state legislature to have a special act pass that enabled the town to set up a special fund, a public art fund to receive the percent for art monies that were generated by construction projects over $100,000, both the big buildings and capital renovation improvement projects. It was passed by the house in the state, but somewhere along the line before it got to the Senate, a Department of Revenue attorney flagged it with some concerns about whether one could actually set up a public art fund in the town budget that would be the recipient of monies that would roll over from year to year and wasn't designated for a particular building project. And so subsequently to that, which happened last fall, some of us met, some of us being Bill Caysen, myself, Paul Bankelman, Andy Steinberg, Lynn Griezmer and Sonia Aldrich, a town controller, and meeting as to how to move this forward given that it was stalled in the legislature. It was decided at that meeting the simplest way to do it would be to remove from the bylaw the elements that related to a public art fund that would contain rollover monies. And then it would not have to go to the state legislature for approval, it could be approved simply by the town itself. So there seemed to be a consensus that that was a way to move forward and as a result, I prepared a version of the bylaw which I'm sure you have now, that marked the areas to delete and made a couple other small adjustments that related to the public art fund and removed from the bylaw the areas that referred to a public art fund and the rollover monies that would support performing arts. So the current version that was distributed to you is the bylaw that would pertain only to the major building projects such as the firehouse, the proposed firehouse school, library renovation and DPW garage, not capital renovation and improvement projects. So at the town council meeting recently, June 3rd, I believe that their decision was to refer the revised bylaw to the CRC committee, then the finance committee, then the third committee to look at wording and then back to the town council within 45 days for discussion and vote. So this is the first step in that process. In the interim, Bill and I have had some further discussions on the revision that you're looking at where we thought there was a way to retain funding for performing arts, but I think I should probably reserve those ideas until we hear further what your questions are and where you wanna go with this discussion. Perfect. So let me turn it over, go ahead, Andy, take it away. I was only going to go in the limited piece and thank you for the summary. When I spoke with the council president, she reminded me that what the referral to the committee was that it was referred to the committee with a request that we report back from the committees to the council within 45 days, but that there was not a commitment to finally act if the committees felt that they needed more time for study or there was other issues that had been identified and the committees could come back and ask for more time, but the request was that committees return to the council with at least a report within 45 days. So I'm trying to figure out what do we have here? So we have a marked up copy of what was eventually approved at town meeting. That's correct. Yeah. Article 28. And then there's also a document. Steve, if I could, what I put on your desk was the approved language from town meeting and then I printed the version that I believe you sent around this afternoon, which would be the 6th or the 19 version with some of the markups in that. Okay. And I think, you know, I recognize and I think we all recognize that the committee hasn't had much chance to review this. I was gonna suggest that we may have a conversation about it today, but perhaps have a more full and robust discussion of it at your meeting in two weeks, but. Yeah. So there was a lot of chatter via, well, there was chatter from town staff who had circulated the copy amongst other town staff, you know, for comments on the proposal and we got that around noon. So do you guys have a copy? Okay. And then Andy has also developed some questions, some of which you may want to, here's what I'm gonna suggest. Why don't you work through what your questions were? We'll start there. Yeah, maybe I should clarify. There are two different documents that were worked on at the same time and what Mr. Zomac printed was actually the piece that, because you admitted the comment boxes, it did not have the questions that were raised by various reviewers that he had asked to take a look at it and see if they could identify issues. But I think what we were doing in parallel processes, Mr. Bachman and myself was to try and begin to identify issues that the committees that have been assigned the responsibility for this review need to consider as we go about our work. And I'm in sort of this position of being chair of the finance committee, which was one of the committees and a member of this committee, so that I sit on both committees, plus as Mr. Brody indicated, have had prior involvement with the process and in the development of the bylaw as it was passed by town meeting two years ago. So what I tried to do is break down questions and I printed enough copies knowing that there would be members of the audience, including Mr. Brody and Mr. Cason who'd be here so that there should be enough copies that at least some others can share and I will send them to the finance committee. Some of my two colleagues who were from the finance committee here in the room who were in the back will also have copies. What I did was I broke it down to issues that I had thought about that were community resources committee issues, what I thought were finance committee issues and then general questions about the bylaw itself and it's a working document. I am inviting members of the finance committee to comment and add to it when we, as we go through our preparation for it, for discussing it which has not happened because it was not noticed at our last meeting and I think I'm not gonna go through what is on here as the way of issues. I think that they kind of probably need to speak for themselves at this point but I think that there are questions that we need to identify and what my hope is is that in the end of the discussion, if the interest of the council is to move forward that we consider a redraft of the bylaw at that point it does not make sense to do that. Until we've had some opportunity to discuss the underlying issues and make sure that we know how they would be addressed in our revised bylaw. So I think that's somewhere I can do quickly. Yeah. And then I can, well I'm sorry Dorothy you want to quick question. This copy, I have the copy with the comments in various colors and I have my own notes and Andy's list but this copy with some things in blue and a few things in lavender. Could you explain the blue and the lavender? So what Dorothy has is the copy of a marked up so from the town manager who circulated this amongst other town staff. These are all comments that were added by various town staff. So I think that BP stands for Backelman comma Paul and I don't recognize the other. We can get that work to the two of you later this afternoon because it's an introductory discussion. I have this. Right. Which is clear, you read the text in some of the comments. It's the same thing, different format. Yeah, same thing. The exact same thing, just a different way. Some of it's highlighted, some of it's the document. So it's actually the exact same document just formatted differently. But we don't have the blue means, that's all. It lines up, actually if you look at your other document there, those same colors are, yeah. I don't know what means there. Okay, okay. Different town staff commented. So I see either a working group starting or, so I see a desire for a more substantial look at this rather than basically moving forward. So I'm just speaking as one member of town council but I see from the comments that are coming from town staff and from Andy and from others, a need to really go back to that which was passed at town meeting and looking thoroughly at some issues that I know have been discussed. And having been part of this and part of the, one of the first work groups for this, I have in my head what some of the answers to some of the questions are, but I can see that it's not immediately obvious to many others and that other concerns are emerging as we tried. So there are a number of questions that have come up all the way from, I mean there's a question about whether or not poor farming arts can be included. So and then the types of, there's also some questions about what the minimum threshold is. Should be 100,000, should be a million. There are questions about who administers and who decides. Discussions about who determines who a qualified arts jury is and how much money can be spent on such jury. There's questions about what should be excluded. So this has to do with if the architects are already involved in designing the building, does their own artistic expression get excluded from this percent from art? I'm sorry, percent for art. So those are the types of questions and I definitely see possibly a work group or possibly, yeah? Well thanks, we can't do that. But I would appreciate it if they were allowed to participate in the discussion with us. So that's one thing. The other thing is, when you said that it would not be renovations and not only would it make the building public, is that correct or did I miss that? That's what we proposed in the revised by-law as a way of simplifying it to remove the area of what seemed to be concerned to the Department of Revenue Attorney. Although I have to say nobody actually spoke to her. This is all in a letter that she wrote but nobody, as far as I know, actually spoke to her to clarify her concerns. In any case, the idea was to remove the area that would provide the roll over funds which seemed to be, just interpolating my own view of what her letter meant, would seem to be that that was the area that caused difficulty for her. She had some other concerns but this was the major one that actually installed movement forward, I think. That the town could not, she was suggesting, establish a fund that would contain money that would roll over year to year, money that was generated from a particular project to be used elsewhere, possibly elsewhere. That was my understanding of it. So we just removed that to simplify it so that the by-law would only apply to the major building projects that we have on and any others that come up in the future. But we have some newer thoughts on that as well but that's not, this isn't the moment to introduce those other things but that's why you're correct in that. Yeah, just briefly to that, I have no objection. I'm sure Bill doesn't either. To a work group that includes us to get there seem to be sufficient questions here that it would be a long time in just debating the issues between those who raise them and think that there aren't good answers to, for us to try and debate that yes there are rather than get a work group together with the concerns expressed by staff, whoever's taking a look at this, some of them have easy answers and some of them a little more complicated. So we should get together, I'm not sure who, you would consider being involved in that group. I think Bill and I should be involved in it of course but it should be small enough so that it actually is productive and I would suggest that we do it sooner rather than later. The goal is for us to have this ready by the time the discussion surrounding capital planning for next year begins if possible. And let me just also say that to your very first point that of course you're Kathy and Shalini, you're welcome to come up and join us and to fully participate if you'd like. And then actually I can invite everyone, Planning Board Designee McGowan and Mr. Mora, you're also welcome to join us at the big table. Room for everyone, yeah. Some of the areas where, I mean there are all kinds of aesthetic issues but some of the areas where the finances get confusing have to do with who is, when people are insuring the art object, what does that mean and is the insurance for the particular artwork or is it just added to the town's whole insurance bill which we wouldn't have a hard time determining and then there are all of these, there's maintenance, there's insurance and then there are questions of does anything ever get deaccessioned? I mean I like the idea of public art. It's just when I sat down and read this with the comments I realized wow this is a lot more complicated than I had thought it was. I don't respond to that saying we already have a considerable number of pieces of public art in town so we do have policies in place for that already. Well so I am kind of curious. For example the golden tree which is in Kendrick Park? I thought about it, I mean I like that a lot. I looked at that and I thought well what are the potentials for vandalism? Has anything happened? How much has insurance cost? Who's paying it? Those questions did come through my mind and I was taught at a college where they did public art in New York City and the locals destroyed it, it was small. So some things that we would love really just can't be out there. You have to really have things that I think you do have some of the wording in here that are strong and look like they will withstand and what you have considered weathering and vandalism. But so the whole question of the maintenance, the supervision and the insurance is that part of the huge sum of money? See I thought one half of one percent was small until I discovered that it's approximately $30,000. No, yeah. $30,000 for each of the major projects that we're talking about. Do I have that right? I think that this is actually a good example of where I was having problems in how to frame a list as I did and that is we can identify a number of issues and we need to then break them into what are finance issues and what are CRC issues. And that's probably a finance issue and we'll probably take that up in the finance committee. I think that the important thing that I was thinking about and I wasn't driving it by a specific deadline tied to the next capital plan because I don't think that the beginning of the capital planning process in our form of government which meets here around matters, it's not like town meeting where you had a deadline of a town meeting session but we did have a commitment made by the council's resolution to refer to two committees and get reports back within 45 days and I think so the time I was driven by was we need to give serious work to try and do the best we can to provide that response within 45 days to have reasons why we can't if we can't but to not assume we can't but assume we can. So that's why I have been trying to move this along quickly to get issues identified and get them divided between the two committees. Just one correction I'm looking at my notes. It would be 150,000 for each of our major projects. If we're gonna contribute it's only the part that the town borrows or gives $30 million for the school, the library and DPW, no not the library, school, DPW and fire and I believe that the percentage would come out to $150,000 for each of those which is a lot of money. And I was quickly trying to do the math and I came up with $5,000 for every million dollar of value, yes? Yep, okay, so it's $5,000 for every million. And that would be $30 million, that would be... Now you're... Okay, well I asked my husband for it and he said he did it for me $150,000. Kathy knows. You're correct on two counts. One is that half a percent is small. The vast majority of percent for art programs in the country are 1% for art. And we initially went to town meeting with that in mind but the two things that we changed in order to bring it back to town meeting the second year was to cut the 1% to one half a percent because the finance committee had its concerns and we felt that it would be more in keeping with Amherst's own ethos to have a half a percent rather than one and the second now I've forgotten what I was gonna say about the second point. But oh, that already is expensive and that $30,000 or $150,000, you have to understand that that doesn't all go toward the art itself, that's for the entire project involving the construction, the building, the maintenance, the administrative costs and everything else involved with making that happen at a particular site. So the actual art piece itself would be considerably less than the 150, it might be closer to 100 or 100 and a quarter depending on what particular contract was written. There are also answers to the other concerns you have regarding the family reunion sculpture in Kendrick Park and liability for that but it probably makes sense not to go through every question that everyone has here because there are a lot of them and they're all over the place but for a working group to get together with the list and go through them where we can actually discuss it as a working group rather than try and come up with definitive answers to every concern right now. Well, I'd be happy to do that if that's what you want to perceive. And there was a conversation earlier about kind of value engineering that if a project goes, I was just overhearing like, let's say you're building a fire station which would be over the threshold in the proposed bylaw and the budget, the construction costs are go over or the proposed, the construction costs are projected to go over what the budget is so cuts have to be made. Where do the cuts come from? When the purpose of the fire station is to house fire trucks and firefighters. So my answer to that would be what do you value? So in other words, and this is a kind of a fundamental architecture question where the good stuff is always taken out of architecture projects at the end because of budgeting issues and I'm looking over at Chris, the landscape architect. So I think it's up to the community to sort of hold the line. So the answer is that if we have to cut the budget, it all gets cut proportionately including the art but the art can, if we pass this bylaw. The current bylaw, even the revised version provides that if the budget for the project declines, the percent for art would decline with it. So half a percent of the revised budget. But if the budget for some reason increases from the initial budgeting, the percent for art would not rise with it. It's a way of protecting the town a little but it goes up didn't necessarily mean the amount budgeted would be based on the initial funding. Andy. I think we're gonna really have to think about get back the process because these are getting into somewhat complicated questions that the finance committee is also beginning to just grapple with. And I did mention Mr. Brody and I will repeat them for the benefit of the entire group. But when we go back to the discussion that was happening within the finance committee and the council in March where Mr. Mangano was presenting various scenarios to us as to how we could fund four projects and the end result of the discussion was that one of the two ways to be able to afford four projects would be to consider cutting the size of projects as far as expenses concerned. And he did what was essentially an arbitrary cut in the budget without getting into what would be required to be eliminated to do that. And it was an exercise in arithmetic as opposed to an exercise in what was necessary for inclusion in a building. Obviously when you're dealing with the fire station one of the things you have to have for example is adequate facilities for firefighters returning from the scene to decontaminate themselves and to take care of their own health and safety and to get their equipment cleaned and those are major components of fire department design to have that kind of facility. Well, when you talk about value engineering I assume that there are some things that you end up not being able to cut. So these are very difficult questions. The working group issue comes up is something that we need to consider as a council too because to the extent that we do that we have also divided it into sections that are assigned to two different committees with two different roles. And as sort of the final observation is that the sum total of all of these buildings need in the end have to come out of a capital budget that comes out of a general budget all of which are very limited. We are not a wealthy community like Cambridge is. And Cambridge keeps coming up as a very good example because they have a marvelous percent for art bylaw that has produced really good results. But we're not in that position. And if we get to the point where our major priority right now for capital is roads and sidewalks at what point do we decide to cut roads and sidewalks to do something else? And those are all important issues that need to be worked through committees but in the end are council issues. I'm gonna take Dorothy. I do agree that there are a lot of financial aspects to be considered but then let's look at the things that are for community resources which have to do with who chooses the artwork, what kind of artwork and for example when you mentioned the fire station I totally agree they have to have what they need but then my mind went to a fire station in New York City and I have seen some really beautiful art on the front of fire stations of heroic kind of stone relief firefighters which I think the firefighters would probably say were essential somehow. So we're gonna have some really tough decisions but one of the questions that was raised by somebody was where does the role of the architect and the artist how they intersect in terms of who can choose which aesthetic and I think it was Gilbert kept saying what about something that's not necessarily a piece of art as we might think of it but a building touch. But a snow plow, no I'm just joking. No, the kind of things that are always cut out when you talk about value. The pretty things that are out of building which are cut out when you have to cut money at the end right, can they ever be funded from this? I mean that's one of the questions that Joanne could ask. Thank you, Chris. I had two questions and one had to do with there was a mention in part of this document I think it was under section three funding about a project team and the architect or excuse me the artist being part of the project team and I wondered and I'm not expecting an answer of this now but does that mean the project review team? In other words, town staff who review a project or does it mean that the artist becomes part of the consultant team with the architect and the structural engineer and the HVAC guy and the landscape architect and all of that? In other words, does that get rolled into the consultants fee in some way or how does that work? The other thing I wanted to know is what role does the design review board, the zoning board of appeals and the planning board have in this because there's a lot said in this document about location and choice of artwork and that kind of thing and currently in our process the DRB and the zoning board and the planning board have a lot to say about location of things and it may be as simple as making sure that something doesn't get in the way of a vehicle or doesn't get in the way of a handicapped person who needs to get into the building. So those things are questions that I had. Let's do a, if we don't mind, we'll just do circle. Oh, okay, go ahead. She yields to the. Okay, well, Chris, the bylaw actually answers your question. The artist, selected artist, bylaw specifies that the artist should be involved with the latter of the two teams that you were talking about, the architect, the landscape designer, and so on as soon as possible in the process so that the artist that was selected would be working in concert with the architect as a team member and of course also getting to the point of view of the other committee's design review and so on, zoning, I think the bylaw also specifies that in conjunction with appropriate town committees you can go to specify every town committee, every person, just the appropriate ones and that presumably, I mean it's in the interest of the art commission and everyone for a project like this to go smoothly so consulting with whomever was the appropriate for that site including the community, the users of the building, the neighbors to the building who would have an interest in where the art was placed and what it might consist of would all be involved as with any major project. Shall we? I was wondering if we can, maybe I can provide another framework to look at something like this which is called multi-solving and so when we look at art just for the sake of art which of course has a lot of value I think but when we're looking at all the financial constraints and it becomes like, oh are we gonna put in all that money into this one thing and I'm wondering if we can look at this in a multi-solving way, like what are the other ways in which this piece of art can provide solutions so one that comes to mind is climate change education so can this piece of art also be part of education of, you know, about climate change and can it also then in that sense be linked to ecotourism for example like the more we have these pieces of art and they're highlighting and telling a story and same, you know, so it sort of links that idea of multi-solving and that also requires a holistic thinking of, you know, gets us all to think about what is this, you know, what value is this gonna provide and what solutions is it gonna provide? So full disclosure because I'm, so I have both an artist and an architect background so I went, I was in Phoenix in the last six months and I specifically went to see the recycling center not because, not that I needed to know more about recycling but because a well-known artist Michael Singer was involved in the design of that so Phoenix is actually a community, I don't know if it's all of Arizona or just Phoenix but that has an amazing, it must be a percent for art program but kind of an amazing public art program so the recycling center is a kind of a big attraction so not just for architects but for, you know, for lots and it also says a lot about what the values of the community are. We believe in recycling but then we also believe in beauty. So the other thing that I keep thinking is that I'm not, in a way I wish, I mean, I think we all would or some of us wish that this had, you know, was approved by a town meeting. I wish that it had become law and that we could test it that we actually had projects to test it because I think some of the questions that are coming up are very real questions but can be sort of answered and addressed as we try to implement. So I'm wondering, so the thing that I keep wondering about is what needs to be in the actual bylaw and what can be set by later policies? So I think that the ideal bylaw doesn't try to answer every possible question right now but it sets up the framework for how future issues will be dealt with like if there is a interpretation that needs to happen, who will make that interpretation? That's a good example of that that's in the bylaw that you can turn to is there was a question of how the art will be decided, who decides? The bylaw specifies that there would be a qualified jury and it actually specifies what the background of the jury members would be that include members of the community, landscape architect, art historians, people who actually have experience in art without specifying who they are. I mean the idea Steve and I support what you're saying is that the bylaw should be flexible enough to not constrain the kinds of art. For example, the eco art that was suggested, the climate art for example, there's no description of what any particular piece of art should be. Just that it should be decided by a jury that the community should be involved and it can be climate involved, firehouse involved, necessary library involved or whatever for school, it could be kinetic art, it could be any kind of thing that is appropriate for the site and the process to determine that would be pretty broad, pretty widespread. You said something that was important to me which is the community should be involved. I've seen too many projects in Amherst take the bandstand for instance, where there were seven ideas, the public voted and the public's choice did not get selected by the bid. And so I'm leery of what that means so could you clarify for me what you mean by residents being involved in the choice of the artwork? Okay, this is a tricky issue in a way because if you get too many people involved, anything decided by a committee tends to drift to the common, the lowest common denominator. So the people that the bylaw specifies that should be involved would be people who are knowledgeable about the arts and people who are involved specifically with the site where the art would be, including the occupants of that building, if that's what it is, the firemen in their case, the neighbors to the firehouse, people across the street, people who have some sort of vested interest in that site. I mean it goes without saying that one person's art is another person's disaster. It also is true that art that is initially rejected by members of the community turn out to be iconic in that community over time. So it's important to remember that it's fairly subjective and you're not gonna get anything that appeals to everyone, I wouldn't think. But the idea of incorporating community members who are close to the project is important because they're the most affected by it. And certainly the people, the architect who has a building design in general should be happy and included as part of the team that decides on what the art would be. I mean you don't, it's the same way with the building itself in a way. There were a lot of people who don't like the buildings that were built downtown and maybe that wasn't too inclusive a design procedure, but some people are fine with it, some aren't. But the idea here is to incorporate as much as possible without making it universal to get opinions and incorporate them into the ideas for what the art should be. I should just speak, I know a little bit about the bandstand, so which was a bid, was going to be a bid donation. So the history of that as far as I know is that they put out an idea there that was designed by a local architect as an idea, but then they had an open competition that you had to be an architect and they had something like 25 submissions for that. And they had a jury which selected a possible winner with no guarantee that actually would be built. We have not voted to do it yet. I don't even know where that project is and they might have had a people's choice also which might have had a different result, but there was a professional jury and then a people's choice. So those were maybe what you're thinking, but yeah, okay, we can talk later. Yeah, we should talk. Yeah, yeah. But I'm not shh. But it isn't of interest to me when we say we want the public involved, but they're not really involved. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I wanted to hear more about what you were thinking. Steve also made a good point about we haven't done this before and that the first project that we do, we'll learn a lot going through it. I mean, our by-law is based on other towns by-laws, not just Cambridge, but I've looked over countless ordinances and by-laws from towns around the country and how they are organized and proceed and they vary in length and in detail from 25 pages or more, the level of detail to very short by-laws like Cambridge's. We were advised by Sandy Puehler at the time who was in the town treasurer. Shorter is better for town meeting and so we did try and keep it as concise as possible. Yeah, answer. Cambridge benefits multiple times because they have their own ordinance, but they also, the MBTA has an ordinance, yes. So the MBTA stations, basically all the red line stations also have public art. So one goes to Cambridge. So it's not just the wealth of Cambridge, but it's the wealth of the MBTA. So one of the things that when we were talking about when you might have to cut a project, what would happen? I believe that the way this is written, if the artist is involved at the very beginning, expenses incurred and hopes are raised so that if one found that you had to make deep cuts in a project as it went on and then you had to cut that, that would be really psychologically unsatisfying and we would have spent money. We would end up with no art, but we would have spent money because we were paying for an artist to be designed to draw to be part of a process. So it's kind of hard, once it started, I think it's hard to turn it off. So the commitment I think would have to be made firmly. Then a comment about public community people. I like what you had suggested. It means that there wouldn't be a member of the public who is the member of the rep of the public, but there would be a changing cast of people that would be those who would be near the object or relate to the object. I mean, that had something to do with it, would have some say. They wouldn't have decisive say, but they certainly would have as much input as other people on the committee. They would have votes, would they not? That's correct. Okay. Actually, it has the specific procedure and voting process is not in the bylaw. I mean, that would be worked out if the bylaw goes into effect. But we did that same process with the utility boxes that were designed. We involved the neighbors, shopkeepers as jurors who were involved, whose stores and shops were near the utility boxes and say it would be the most effective. And that seems to have worked out. So, regarding the next steps and how to most efficiently use everyone's time. We don't, I mean, we don't have the authority to form a working group on our own. So I'm actually looking to you all for guidance on this, but one, because Andy, well, we can make a recommendation. Would it be the president that would assign a working group? Yeah. One of the issues, we have to make that decision fairly soon if we want to set one up, because we didn't specify exactly how one would get set up in rules because we ran into, does each committee set up their own? Does the president set up their own? So a question of establishing one, it was the definition of what it was and can be was put in, but not that specific. But, you know, and so basically it's, it's sitting with GOL has come back and here, give us some options and exactly how we could implement it. But if we have one we want to set up, we could expedite the, let's figure out how to do it. I hate these things. It does seem that the council needs to approve an ad hoc committee or a working group. So I think that we could form it. We could start thinking about who we want on it and say to the council that this is something that we need and we need to make a decision to get it started. So that is something we could maybe add to the next agenda. Yeah. So the essential be that there would be at least one person from finance, at least one person from CRC. These two, whoever from your group wants to be involved and someone else. Yeah. Potentially if there's a particular town staff person that would it be good. In other words, like which perspectives do you really want at the table? You see three volunteers right there. You know, and I'm just saying that that is a potential because that's bringing in those so that we don't then run into these issues again later. Actually someone from the planning board is a good idea. Could you repeat the people again? I would think that from someone from the CRC, someone from the finance. Councilor Knott from either group, a town staff, and then these two guys or some representatives from. Yes. If I could, Steve, I think it'd probably be the town manager or his designee. Yeah, yeah. Do we want to make recommendations from the CRC who we think should be on that? One of the things is we need to sit down and spend a little bit of time as a group in terms of liaisons. For example, we said that we needed to have a CRC liaison to the planning board. Then I think I said we read the notes and that we need to have one to the housing committee. So then we were gonna have one on the art committee. So that's three of us. We just don't want to have one person doing more than one of those things because it gets too much. Yep. Well, liaison is different and that's also the reason we need to expand the committee. But I was trying to figure out who would do what and I kind of thought you wanted to be in the housing committee but I'm just taking a guess. But this would be a, this is a time limit. This is a time limit of one single purpose. Exactly what we were trying to avoid the ad hoc. How many meetings do you think this group would have? Is there any sense of? I would hope that, you know, one man can dream but I would hope that this could be a one hundred. Based upon the zero net energy, I wouldn't make that assumption at all as far as it being a quick or easy process that would be a small number of meetings. And obviously I'd like to have the opportunity to discuss it with the finance committee as a finance committee separately. And before we, because I'm not sure that the finance committee doesn't want to deal with financial issues separately itself as opposed to the statutory issues. And, but I think we could report back. So we had to report within 45 days. So we had to wait until 45 days. We could have the chair report to the president and ask her advice as to how to proceed with the suggestion that some sort of working group was discussed within the committee and the committee would like her feedback. That's a good way to do it. If it's okay with the CRC, I'll take Andy's recommendation. It would be nice to, you guys have put a ton of time in this as has the town, you know, the town meeting members. So it would be, I wish that we had a way of, you know, getting a sense of the council as to whether or not that there is a favorability towards this concept. And I don't think we have a good way of doing that. Not like a straw poll, like we approve this in principle, but it would be nice to know that we're not, that you're not going into a big headwind. So I could say that we could take a vote on whether the idea of some percentage of capital projects go for public art, but no details specified. I guess I would suggest that that really is a council question, not a committee question. We are only trying to provide development of issues for committees. The finance committee, I think really needs to have a serious conversation about the finance issues before we do deal with this as a whole because the financial considerations and the impact, the numbers and how they cumulatively affect what we do are all things that need to be discussed in the appropriate group. I just ask that we be notified before the finance committee has this conversation so we can be present. As chair, I'll say absolutely. And it would be posted to agenda and we would make sure that we're aware of it. And yeah, I think we talked about we're taking it up at the next meeting, right? It's supposed to be the 25th. We may take it up, yes, on the 25th. I think that we have to decide how much time we're going to need to allot to the 132 Northampton Road proposal. Just we meet, it's 930 in the morning on the 25th. So as you heard that we have one other clear topic we have to do, so. I'll be here that day, I'll be out of it. Yeah, if you look. I'm thinking that it's helpful. There are a lot of questions here that I could answer and be happy to write answers to the questions. Actually it'd be helpful to get the ones with the staff comments on it as well so that I could prepare a document for whatever working group there is. Circulate that in advance and hopefully get a head start on a lot of the questions that are basically lack of clarity or something that that I know that may not be as clear in the bylaw as it should be. Obviously if it's raised the question. So I'm happy to do that, but the complete list of concerns. To me that makes sense. The other question was KP law review when the council as a whole met this was gonna go to KP law to look at before potentially and after. I know that KP law looked at it originally and has seen the bylaw as it came through town meeting but I'm just asking how that would figure into this as well. And I'm looking to my photo friend. I don't think KP law has seen, I mean this has been an evolving draft over the last even 24 hours. So I'm pretty confident that KP law hasn't been involved recently and not with revisions, but I think depending on how the president wants to move forward with a working group or some other structure, KP law would be part of that review as the document evolves. I think getting you both the questions in advance shouldn't be a problem at all. So maybe you could get a jumpstart and I can facilitate that happening tomorrow. Thank you. The only thing that I would caution us is that the development of the questions is still a work in progress. So I think that the commitment should be trying to get them in advance and to do it as much in advance as possible of actually taking it up but not to have you work on questions that might be crossed off the list because these are working documents right now where people are putting it together but nobody has really called a final list of questions. We are just starting to seriously grapple with this. So what you're suggesting I assume is not to do anything with this until we get a more advanced document after you compile further thoughts. So right now there are, as far as I can see there's scattered comments coming in from various directions that have not been, there's not like a consensus of, like some people's questions might seem resolved to others. So in the interest of not sending you off in different directions, I think better would be a list of kind of consensus questions. Like these are the common concerns, you know that a work group or whomever has. Make sense? Yep. Thank you so much for your advocacy of this. Yeah. It's for the town. So when will we hear further relative to the work group and when it might meet, et cetera, et cetera? I think I will work with the town manager and have him or I will do it on his behalf, reach out to you in the next 24 hours or so. Thank you. So looking at our agenda and looking at who's here, I'm wondering if we can jump to the, are you guys are here for the master plan or just general interest? Yeah. Should we just jump to the master plan discussion? Okay. So we're gonna jump to number six discussion of elements of the master plan. And yes, please. So last time we discussed the syllabus, which we don't have yet, but just, yeah, we will. But what we want to, we heard a desire to talk about parts of the master plan. So we've had the overview of the master plan. And now we think that it's useful to have discussion of some of the elements, basically some of the chapters. So Dave and I talked and we thought that maybe starting from the end might be a good place to start, in part because the implementation part of the master plan has gotten a lot of discussion. So I don't know the, so Chris, you're gonna help walk us through that. So I can go back to what I presented to you earlier. I think it was a month or so ago when we talked about the master plan and what's in it. The master plan has sections that are required by state law. And the sections are that you need to set up a set of goals and policies for the town. They want a section on land use, how we're going to deal with land use, a section on demographics and housing, another section on economic development, a section on natural and cultural resources. Open space and recreation is another section and services and facilities, transportation and circulation and implementation. So I would say of all of these sections over the last nine years since this master plan was adopted, we've probably given the most attention to land use, demographics and housing, economic development, natural and cultural resources, open space and recreation, transportation and circulation. And we here in town hall, I should say, I'm basing this on my view from the second floor, which is conservation planning and inspection services. So the thing that we here on the second floor haven't necessarily been focused on is services and facilities, but we have concentrated on transportation and circulation. We've done a lot of changes to the zoning bylaw, which result in changes to land use. We've studied demographics and we've done a lot of work on trying to get more affordable housing in town and more housing in general. We've hired an economic development director and the second floor has been working very closely with him on trying to develop the economic life of Amherst. Mr. Zomek and the conservation commission have worked very hard on the natural and cultural resources and inventorying them and trying to take care of them. Open space and recreation, we have published an updated open space and recreation plan, which was approved by the state. And we hired a consultant and did prepare a transportation and circulation plan, which was published in 2015. So we've done a lot of good implementation of the master plan. Section 10, which is called implementation, initially there was supposed to have been a master plan implementation committee set up. And the select board made some attempts to do that and the planning board made some attempts to do that. In the end, we never actually set up a formal master plan implementation committee, but I must say that going through the goals and strategies of the master plan and reviewing them, we really have done a lot of work on the particular items that have been listed as things that we wanted to work on. So I can walk you through some of these. If you turn to page one of the appendix, which comes after the text, there's implementation is the title of section 10. And then at the end of that or at the after page, let's see, what is it? After page 10.7, you'll see an appendix and we can walk through some of the items in the appendix. And those are the objectives and strategies that are listed in the master plan. So on page one of the appendix, objectives and strategies is the land use section. And we've done quite a bit of work on that. About a third of the way down the page, use flexible zoning techniques, such as form-based codes to promote mixed use development. We've had a lot of mixed use development in town in the last nine or 10 years. We did change our zoning by-law to allow mixed use buildings by right by side plan review. And we have currently several mixed use buildings which have been built and some which are under development right now. So that's considered a good thing for many, many reasons, including environmental reasons. If you have people living and working in the same place or living and shopping in the same place, that's a really good thing because it cuts down on pollution and avoids people having to use transportation as much as they might have to do. We've undertaken rezoning efforts in order to direct more intensive development to appropriate areas and limit development in resource areas. So if you drive through town, you see that most of our development is in our downtown and our village centers. And we try very hard to limit development out in the outlying areas. So driving along Northeast Street and Southeast Street, you see wide open expanses of preserved land. And that's due to directing development to the downtown and the village centers. Creating incentive zoning with bonuses for well-designed infill and redevelopment. We do have a cluster zoning section of our by-law which does provide some bonuses for infill and redevelopment. Moving down the page, providing incentives to encourage infill and redevelopment. As I said, we do have that in our zoning by-law. Reducing energy use by encouraging new residences near supporting goods and services. Well, that's pretty much the same as creating mixed use centers. So that if you're living and working and dining and buying things in the same area, you don't have to use transportation as much. Moving down the page, change zoning to allow denser residential occupancy near existing services. It's just a different way of saying the same thing. Encourage increased upper floor residential development in downtown and village centers to support a vital economic and social setting. So when I first came to work in town here, we had a zoning by-law that required, I think I've mentioned this before, a certain amount of land area per dwelling unit in the downtown area. And so all of our existing housing in the downtown was considered non-conforming. And the zoning was changed to take away the requirement for a certain amount of land area per dwelling unit in the downtown. And that made downtown development of residential development possible. Moving down the page, we just talked about developing more public art in downtown and village centers. So we're working on that. Using downtown green spaces more intensively and adding play spaces to encourage people of all ages to congregate. So we have done a lot of work on developing plans for the North Common, which would certainly be a downtown green space that could benefit the town. And we're currently working on a project to get a grant to develop a play space in Kendrick Park. We're hoping to get a park grant for that. Promoting sustainable tourism, of course we're doing that as well. So going on to the next page, page, I guess it's page, yeah, page two at the back of page two, about halfway down the page. Some of the same things we've talked about already, encouraging development in village centers in downtown. It's a little bit repetitive. But we're having an ongoing effort establishing business parks with necessary infrastructure in appropriate areas for clean businesses, research companies, professional offices and hidden tech. We were just having a discussion the other day about the fact that our PRP, our professional research park district up in North Amherst is not served by sewer and water. And we were trying to figure out how to pay for extending sewer and water to that area. Inventorying areas needing environmental cleanup, known as brownfields. We have this sort of informal understanding of where some of the potential brownfields are in town. And that's a topic of discussion among members of the Amherst redevelopment authority. They've been talking about that quite a bit. Organizing and coordinating administrative procedures to ensure that permit process itself does not represent an unreasonable impediment to desired development. I think we've made a tremendous effort in the last 10 years moving the inspection services, conservation and planning all into the same space on the second floor where we can talk to one another, have meetings together, bring applicants in and sort of do a one stop shopping and helping them with their permitting process. Going down the page about almost at the bottom, it says increased density of residential units in specified areas where strict design and planning guidelines are met. So recently we've had a series of meetings, two meetings in fact, about the chapter 40R districts. And that's what we're trying to do with the chapter 40R districts is to allow more density in certain locations when we do set up particular design guidelines. So we're very excited about that as a prospect. Going down almost to the bottom of the page, inventorying and evaluating town owned lands that are not dedicated to or restricted to an exclusive public use. So Mr. Zomick has been working on an inventory of town owned lands and we're trying to figure out what to do with them. I, the name of that program doesn't leap to my mind but perhaps Mr. Zomick could tell you what that is if you ask him to. Begin a multi-year, so the next page, begin multi-year design and capital budget planning for new recreation facilities. That's another thing that Mr. Zomick has been working on with the leisure services department and with Nate Malloy of my department, particularly studying the Mill River, just the Mill River recreation area and community field and the area around the war memorial pool to try to figure out how we can improve those and maintain them in a better way. In moving down the page, encouraging community charrettes to encourage public input into design. So we've been doing that. We had a lot of public input into the design of the North Common. We've been working on that with Graf Park. So whenever we have a big project like this, we are encouraging public input. We will have a session of public input on the Kendrick Park Playground on June 27th. I'm not sure where that will be yet, but June 27th in the evening, we're gonna have a public forum on the design of the playground for Kendrick Park. And we're trying to educate the public about land use regulation. I've spoken with the former town meeting coordinating committee as well as the League of Women voters and given sessions about what zoning is and how it works in Amherst and we're trying to get those messages out to the public. Moving down a little bit, identifying design standards that will preserve existing town character and develop a design review process. Well, we already have a design review process with the design review board, but the local historic district is interested in developing a set of design standards for the local historic districts and the planning board is also interested in developing form-based code, which would be particularly useful and is actually required as for a form of it would be required as part of the 40R district. In the middle of the page, creating walkable neighborhoods and village centers, we've been doing a lot of work with DPW and others to try to figure out where sidewalks should be and how wide they should be and what they should look like and some of the new sidewalks that you see up in the northern part of the downtown are not the old design, they don't have any brick, they're much smoother and I think better designed and so it makes it easier to have a walkable community when you can actually walk on the sidewalk. Creating walkways to connect businesses and residents, creating walkways between buildings, we've been working on that. Developing a town-wide plan, mapping of future greenways, sidewalks and bike lanes and amending land use regulations to implement the plan. So we've had an ongoing project with Pioneer Valley Planning Commission where we've been mapping sidewalks and bike lanes and trying to figure out where we should develop new sidewalks and bike lanes and we're continuing to work with landowners to establish easements for greenways so when we do have a project that comes before us, we often do require that there be some kind of access or we have a discussion with developers about creating access. Actually, Greenleaves is a good example of that. Greenleaves has an access to the bike path from the very rear of their property and the Paul Cole development down at South Amherst has a big area, I think it's seven acres that Mr. Cole is donating to the town and that has access to the trolley line that goes up over the notch and that's used as a walkway for many people and I believe that the town recently acquired most of that trolley line. So moving on to demographics and housing at the, towards the bottom of page three, using dimensional regulations to encourage the construction of smaller homes on smaller lots. We've been trying to figure out how to do that. One case where we did actually accomplish that was to pass the zoning by-law that allows people to build a supplemental detached dwelling unit in their backyard and that could either be rented or it could be used for family members. One of the requirements is that either one of the units needs to be owner occupied so I think that's working well. Developing design guidelines for multifamily dwellings we're trying to put together some guidelines for mixed use buildings but we do have design guidelines for townhouses and duplexes, particularly for duplexes, not so much for townhouses yet but duplexes are required to look as much like a single family home as possible and you can read about that in the zoning by-law. We revised the zoning by-law to make it easier to create attached and detached accessory apartments and duplexes out of existing owner occupied housing stock so that's an accomplished fact and allowing two family houses by-right in all residential zoning districts. Well we don't allow them in all residential zoning districts but in the RG district we do allow two family houses by-right which means by site plan review if they are owner occupied or if they are all affordable. So I don't know if you want me to keep going through this list, is this helpful or do you want to ask questions? Do you have comments of your own? Are there particular areas that you wanted to talk about or what do you think, shall I keep going? If I could, I had gone over this a little bit with Chris beforehand but we all don't look at the master plan necessarily on a day to day basis but when you actually, when we sat down and looked at this matrix it was actually quite impressive to think and I was really not part of the master plan, the creation of it but to think how many things the town has accomplished but this was actually a pretty comprehensive list of this is the to-do list that came out of the master plan and there's plenty left to do. I think part of the role of the CRC and of the council is as we look at the master plan to say A, does the council believe the overarching tenants and goals and objectives of the master plan are still what we want them to be and looking at this list and saying, ah, these are the action items, this is the to-do list. Are there things that we want to add to the to-do list or are there things that we want to take off the list? Some of these have been accomplished so one of the goals that I want to sit down with Chris and Rob and others in our staff to look at is really putting some dates as to when some of these have been accomplished because I think that would be a very interesting product is to go through and say, what have we done and what have we accomplished? So I'll stop there and I'm sure Chris. It also seems like it would give us a frame of reference because if we think it's done and but we're noticing something else or a way to continue it or yes, it has been done. I think it would be a really good frame of reference. One question and actually it's Dorothy Pam and I have had this discussion about one of the things you just mentioned and I'll just give it as an example. Cluster development, we were talking about gee, cluster development was really a great accomplishment but we weren't entirely certain whether there has been actually any cluster developments proposed or built and I think that is one example but it was the one we talked about. Well, Chris is gonna tell us but slower than when you told me before. She told me we've actually, the town has actually done some but I would like a tour but tell us some of the places. So I think the definition of cluster development in Amherst is perhaps a little different from what some of you may think of cluster development elsewhere. Ms. Pam gave me an example of, I think it's a place in Garden City. I forget the name of it, maybe Sunnyside or? Sunnyside Gardens. Sunnyside Gardens and that's a very famous development that is fairly urban in style. It's a townhouse type of development built around open spaces and some of the open spaces are used for just a green lawn and some are used for more intensive development. So that is a type of cluster development that we do not have in Amherst but what we do have, we have a cluster development method of building and we have examples of that on Owen Drive in North Amherst. Owen Drive is a prime example of cluster development. I think there are either 17 or 19 homes up there and a very large area of open space that was preserved as a result. The open space stretches pretty much from the cul-de-sac at the end of Owen Drive almost all the way to North Pleasant Street and that is currently owned by a family that is renting part of it out for farming and I think they have animals there and so it's active farmland and people can walk through it and so that's an example of cluster development. We have another one which is Paul Cole's property in South Amherst which is a development of eight single family homes clustered in a small area on the north end of the property and on the south end is about seven acres of land that was recently donated to the town as open space so that is our form of cluster development where we put the homes on a smaller area so that we can preserve open space elsewhere. So now we're getting down into the, it's interesting that you never would have thought of Owen Drive as cluster development but I would have thought of Dickinson Meadows right next door as cluster development. What was the development method for Dickinson for? Dickinson Meadows, that's Ray Mann's development I think and that is actually taking advantage of frontage lots and flag lots and then creating a private driveway to serve them and they all have frontage on Owen Drive so it's not exactly a development method it's more of a creative way of using the zoning bylaw to cluster houses and then have a lot of open space. And then Pine Grove which would have redated right? The cluster, so places that I think of cluster development if I were to not know the zoning bylaw and move around Amherst I would say it's Pine Grove, Dickinson Meadows so these are places that are sort of tightly developed but is Pine would? Pine Hollow on Pine Street, is that what you're talking about? I'm thinking of the 30 year old development in Amherst the first part of Amherst Woods. On Oak Farm Road, yeah that's Ice Pond Woods and that is, and Pine, is it Pine Grove? Maybe. I think it's called Pine Grove. So that was not exactly a cluster development I believe that was developed under the PURD form of development plan unit residential development which allows clustering of homes not dividing the property into lots but clustering of homes and then having large open spaces near them so there are a number of different ways that you can do this. The example of Sunnyside Gardens is something that may be considered more closer to the center of town and these other forms might be more suitable to the outer areas. One of the reasons that we were talking about this we're interested in it was that we think that we need to make some more homes that people buy so that to keep the town balanced between is becoming an awful lot of renters but we need both but we haven't built any smaller houses that people have a better chance of affording because obviously the construction industry knows how to build a beautiful $650,000 house but we're looking for some way to create some privately owned houses that at a much lower price and we're not quite sure how but we're really interested in looking into this. A naive question looking at demographics and housing H.1.A. It says create more flexible development regulations using a range of prices as the key criteria. Can you speak to that a little bit? That's a tough one. It relates mostly to rental housing I think. The price of land in Amherst is so high that it makes it very difficult for developers to develop single family homes in a range of prices. They seem to be mostly developing at the higher end but if you do look at some of our rental development you'll see that there are a range of prices. We have a new development that's gonna be going in where the Amherst Motel is and it will be market rate housing units as well as affordable housing units. They're gonna be 11 affordable units at 80% or less of area median income and Barry Roberts development on University Drive which is currently under construction is 36 units altogether and four of them will be affordable at 80% or less of area median income. So there are properties that are being developed for rental that have this range of prices. So it would be like Pomeroy Lane which is when I met you from our kids we're so young had a range of income so it was a mixed income development and that's basically what this is referring to. I think so. Thank you. I have a question on the extent to which you look across all the pieces of zoning in which things are barriers or non-facilitators, you know, stand in the way and then I know you have a working list in your zoning subcommittee but also thinking of where if there's been non-conforming use for a while and it's working well and not causing problems in the neighborhood that you think in terms of all the variants for this property might make sense even though we said it could on this particular piece it could only be X, Y or Z and I know when I was reading about the Amherst Motel it seems to have been non-conforming for 57 years and I'm wondering whether it was non-conforming at the point it was built and we just didn't have this and then we zoned it later but you know thinking of the flexibility without going and changing the entire law but changing it property by property because I don't think you do that very often is that would that be correct that you come back with a variance to say we're getting something we want even though we didn't technically rezone this area? So most of the time those properties are dealt with under a special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals and it is possible to change the use or change the building on a property that is non-conforming so in the case of Amherst Motel the Amherst Motel in its current state of apartments and motel units is a non-conforming use in the PRP zone. That property hasn't always been zoned PRP professional research park it was zoned probably residential prior to that I'm not exactly sure what it was zoned but anyway that building became non-conforming as a result of the zoning changing. There are a series of special permits that were issued to it in the past and now the new developer is taking advantage of that property being non-conforming by creating something new that is the zoning board of appeals has found it to be not more detrimental to the neighborhood than the pre-existing condition so that's how that is being allowed to go ahead so that's an opportunity that some developers might find on a property that is non-conforming does that answer your question? So, but I'm also looking at maybe not a whole new building and people just have been using it in a way that when you finally look at it and it's just because otherwise you have to rezone the area to enable I understand so this developer understood that it had always been non-conforming so now here's another non-conforming that's similar. I'm looking for how much flexibility do you have because I understand that you don't do variances a special permit when you're building new for the first time but not for someone reconfiguring. So we don't have variances for use so sometimes, very rarely, grant variances for dimensional requirements but no variances have been granted for use but I can't think of something that had a problem as a result of being non-conforming if it is non-conforming it's usually allowed to be ongoing and could be expanded, could be changed as long as it is considered to be legally non-conforming and that's a determination that's usually made by the building commissioner. Steve I just wanted to follow up on something that Dorothy said earlier about I guess it was a comment about affordability with a lower case A, affordable housing. So I think as we talk among staff one of the things we're looking at and we're following is what are the impacts in the marketplace that are the result of the new housing that's being built and so we're seeing primarily rental housing being built for students, for young professionals et cetera we don't know the impacts of those changes in our Amherst marketplace yet they'll be evolving over time but anecdotally one of the things we're seeing if we were here seven years ago, five years ago even seven, eight years ago I wouldn't be able to say this at that time we were seeing a lot of conversions of single family homes to rentals and I think as a staff through our inspections team and our planning department we're seeing fewer and fewer of those and in fact we're beginning to see even some of those rentals or formerly rentals coming back on the market now and being sold and they might be sold to another investor who rents or they, I spoke to a person the other day who is buying a house that was formerly rental and she will be an owner occupied it'll be an owner occupied house for the first time in many years so we're in the midst of changes happening in the marketplace here and I think it will be interesting to see what happens with some of those houses that we might have formerly said were affordable on the lower end of home ownership in town. We have a lot of developers who come to Amherst I remember meeting with some of them and Chris and Rob and I met with some folks who developed a number of housing units and developments up at Endurum up at UNH and there was very much a rebound in the market in other words houses that were formerly rented by undergraduates came back on the market so over the next two to five years it'll be interesting to see what happens in the marketplace here in Amherst so. Janet McGowan, I have a question about UMass and expanding student enrollments and someone muttered to me recently that UMass was looking to add 10,000 new students because that seems to be the driver of housing prices and rental housing prices and rents in Amherst and so does the planning department have an understanding of where UMass is going and talking to UMass that housing its own students instead of making UMass Amherst the housing dorms of UMass? My understanding is that UMass is making efforts to expand their housing options. They're proposing, I believe it's a thousand units of housing for students along Massachusetts Avenue and they're probably going to be working on that project over the next couple of years so that's one effort that they're making and I have not heard that they're expanding their student population by 10,000 but I'm not aware of that. I do, I have attended campus planning committee meeting and I didn't hear anything about 10,000 new students. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say that I think they need to be really careful at this point because the cohort coming in is smaller. You know that we're seeing small places fail but it's partly that what we've seen in elementary schools is in smaller high schools is there's a smaller group coming into college and universities. There is a report I believe the UMass and economic development with the town there's some joint report which did say that I think it was 2025 where there would be 3,500 beds short. UMass would be short by 2025 because their admissions are increasing and even though they will be building more they'll still be short but that being said I have spoken to people on UMass who feel that that's a temporary increase because it is gonna taper or even decline because of increasing online education and in affordability and many different reasons. But I think that's what you might be referring to. I did hear, this is a couple of years ago that it was gonna be increased 20,000 and that was maybe four years ago and yes, the cohort is smaller but I think what UMass is doing is I think it's, a lot of little colleges have been closing. I'm not talking about Hampshire because that's a special school but other liberal arts schools have been closing. I think that UMass is really writing on its power right now and I think it's still growing and I don't expect to see a shrink. It feels very strong, it feels very, it's becoming a major place. One thing that did puzzle me, I saw in the newspaper, Alista, it said honor students, UMass who live in Amherst and it was a huge list and I thought some of these people probably didn't grow up in Amherst but may have moved to Amherst for in-state tuition rates. It was in the paper just a few days ago and I couldn't believe it, it was hundreds and hundreds long and it wasn't just students, it was honor students from UMass that live in Amherst. Steve, just to reiterate what Chris said, so and to answer your question Janet, we meet frequently with the university and so they have not articulated any plans and when asked responded that there are no plans to grow to 10,000 more students or 20,000 more students in the next 10 years. So that's not an articulated plan that we've heard and we've asked many times. So I have to take that, we have to take that on face value. I think there is growth in online so when they're counting students there are hundreds more students taking classes online who may never set foot in Amherst. So there's different ways to look at their data. What we do know about housing is they are committed to a fast, Chris said a thousand more beds on Mass Ave that would in all likelihood be a P3, a public-private partnership. How that is gonna play out has yet to be seen, but we're at the table talking with them about that P3 development of a thousand more beds. Now we also need to keep in mind and again this is just for broad information that just because if you Mass were to add 2,500 beds or 3,000 beds on campus today, we have to remember that that, we don't know what the market impacts of that would be. We have seen movement from other towns as UMass and Amherst have built new, more modern apartments with modern amenities. If you had the choice to live in one EP or a new dorm on campus in the Commonwealth College and not picking on Sunderland, but Cliffside or one of the apartments that are eight miles away on the bus route, one might if you could afford, you might wanna be closer to campus and the Chancellor has expressed interest in having more of the university's already existing students be closer to campus for the experience that that affords. Having lived in Cliffside for a year, I can say that I loved Cliffside but not in January, February or March sitting out at that bus stop waiting for that PVTA. Wonderful experience being on the PVTA but it was a long way to go after you studied till 11 o'clock at night. So this is leading to my big question. We're having some demolition of buildings in the center of town. We're talking about the changing building and who's gonna live where or who might move where and what is going to happen there? Is there any input from the town or is it just we wait and see what the private property owner comes up with and I would just hope that that could be somehow included in planning. Did I turn the recording off? The town has a master plan. The master plan informs zoning, zoning informs developers what they can develop basically. So do you wanna add to that? Yeah, so developers have a sort of an envelope in which they can develop. They know what the setback limits are. They know how tall things can be. They know how much lot coverage and building coverage they can have and then they design something that meets those requirements. And so we haven't seen anything from a developer about that property. We know people are interested in developing in that area in general. We did see a plan from the owners of the property to the north of that recently about a year ago and that wasn't met with the great enthusiasm by the design review board. So those landowners have decided to back off and not develop their property at this time but we haven't seen anything about the particular property where the demolition is slated to occur. Ask a question that so many people asked us when we were on the campaign trail and it's so much about the sign of the building itself downtown but more the sidewalks and the setbacks and what are those and do they allow for people on wheelchairs and two people with a pram and a wheelchair? Is that part of the zoning bylaws? Want me to take a stab? Or so there's two different questions. So there's one is where can you build on your private property? And then the other question is how does the town develop its public way? So in that part of town, building to the front setback to the edge of the street, it's required, isn't it? Like we don't, okay, so it's encouraged to, yeah. Encouraged to be close to the property line, the front property line, but not necessarily to be on it although you're allowed to be on it. I think that if we had form-based code which we don't we would have this discussion about how do you build a community? We would look at the block that everyone loves which is the... The Hastings block? The Hastings block for lack. And those buildings are built right to the sidewalk. The sidewalks however are 12 feet wide, big enough for, you know, outdoor seating for informal conversations. So that didn't happen in front of Wendy's pleasant because the public way is pinched there. So I think it's an open question as to whether or not in that particular part of town that there's sort of a public and private effort to build wider sidewalks. So there's one particular point where it gets, that you're pinched as the building turns to the corner. But so that's a question that I've been asking myself is there could be a requirement that the combination of a sidewalk built on public property and private property is a certain dimension. Right, and I was just gonna say looking at, I attended some of the zoning subcommittee and one of the things on the possible list is the specification of a wider sidewalk. Yeah, yeah. Which we don't, if you search through to a word search you don't find sidewalk dimensions in terms of, you know, it's an existing sidewalk rather than what you just said, you know, it was very... Wendy's pleasant's a new sidewalk. I mean, it was a rebuilt. But it was built to where it was. You know, so some of these are things that could be changed for the future. The dimensional requirements could be changed and one idea that I have is that where a sidewalk is really narrow, like where it's five feet wide, then you actually have to set your building back five feet from the property. That's exactly what. So there might be some relationship between an existing sidewalk and how far a building needs to be set back. But that's gonna be a zoning amendment that would have to be passed. So that might be something that would be coming before you in the future. I was seeing in New York and other places they give incentives to the builders. So because it is private property and so, you know, that becomes some, I mean, I don't know, I have no idea about this design stuff and all that. I mean, that's just what I read. And so can we get creative around that where we ensure the sidewalks and while incentivizing the builders to do that and beautify it and make it walkable and so forth, so rather than penalizing, can we incentivize? So Manhattan, specifically Manhattan, is the physical embodiment of efforts to tweak the zoning code to make it more pedestrian friendly, to make it more friendly to developers, however you wanna see it. But it's actually very interesting to look at the history of New York because New York is one of the first adopters of a zoning code basically. So things that look nice like the shape of the wedding cake buildings, those were done in partly in response to zoning code. So New York, Manhattan has a program where that if you give public space, public amenities, then you can get extra height or extra bulk or something like that. So you can often find the little brass demarker that says you're now entering private property. So it can be privately policed. I mean, there's all kinds of other social issues regarding that. Actually, there's books written on the subject that we could take a whole semester on this. Can we do it before the building applications get filed? We're running out of time and we have one more thing on our agenda. I think this has been incredibly helpful. So there's one other column that would be amazing, so we have responsible entities and then especially in the cases where we think we've done it or we think we can do it, it's how, like is it through the zoning by-law? Is it through the purchase? Like sometimes the goal is to purchase land. So if we, so what are the tools that we're using? So we have responsible entities, the timeframe and then I think the tools would be something that would be incredibly useful. And if it's, we think it's a win, specific reference to where that win is. Also it'd be love, like not all report cards have A's. It'd be nice to see where the great failures are. Like we thought that this was a really great idea, we tried it and it didn't work. May I say something too? Sometimes we have other things that come along that help us like the Green Communities Act. Amherst became a green community and all of a sudden we had all kinds of incentives to use alternative energy sources and do sustainability, sustainable development, et cetera. So we do work in collaboration with the state and also with the private sector to accomplish some of these things. So there are many actors, not just actors in town hall. For our own retreat. So I was gonna do goals and then can we do that under other, yeah. So we have maybe seven minutes left. I sent out a goals document and I will fully admit I'm struggling with the goals document. So I tried to capture what we had talked about on the matrix that Lynn Griesmaier had provided to us. But, and I don't know if you've been able to look at it. But if you have comments, I sent it out by email. I was very excited by it and I did read over it very quickly but I think it deserves a really thorough read. Yeah, we can take it to next week but it'd be nice to know if there's specific things that we can. Steve, perhaps it's the first agenda item in two weeks and I did bring hard copies if anybody wants a hard copy to take with them. I'd love one actually. We could definitely do it as the first agenda next week, but if there's any. We're not meeting next week. Two weeks. Two weeks, yeah. You guys can meet. I'm gonna be out of town, unfortunately. Yeah. And I'm not sure that's something that we can form either. Like, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Also, I was gonna report on, I went to the last, if it's, so we're gonna put this first on the next agenda. Any comments, please get those to me. I met with the zoning subcommittee of the planning board after our last meeting and basically they too, so they too reviewed our meeting with them, which they thought went really well. But I think the major topic of discussion was who does, who makes proposals for changes to the zoning bylaw? Should that be primarily a responsibility of the zoning subcommittee of the planning board? Or now that we have a town council, should it be primarily responsible of the town council? So one, the argument for the planning board is that ultimately they're the group that's closest to the zoning bylaw and the group that has to hold the public hearing. The argument for doing the town council is through the group that ultimately has to pass any zoning bylaw and the group that's more distant from it. And then also the group that doesn't have to then interpret the zoning bylaw at some future date. So I reached out to, and I think others have also, our friends in Northampton to see how they do it. And they responded, because everyone, we always refer to Northampton. I don't know how much they know that. And they do it in a similar way that we, well they do it in a way that the planning board or committee of the planning board is the initiator of changes to the zoning bylaw. But then when they have the required public hearings, so the planning board is required to have public hearings, they hold that as a joint meeting with their planning board and their equivalent of the CRC. So that might be a model that we can consider. Also we need to get our, we need to get a liaison. We have a liaison already spot on the zoning subcommittee, but we need to get that populated. Chris. I think the information that came from Northampton also said that often planning department staff come up with the zoning, the ideas for zoning amendments. And that's usually based on experiences that they have dealing with the existing zoning. So that's another option. And they do hold joint meetings, but not always. It seems that their two groups have different schedules. So sometimes when they're able to come together, they hold a joint meeting and it would be the equivalent of you all community resources committee. In their case it's called the Legislative Matters Committee would hold a joint meeting with the planning board to hear a zoning amendment. But in some cases they can't manage to do that and they hold separate public hearings. But in any case, both groups need to hold a public hearing on a zoning amendment. Recently come to my attention because of the discussion of the current bylaw review process that because we are now a city that we are required to have a council hearing on proposed zoning that's additional to the planning board hearing on zoning. And are the hearings in Northampton combined hearings or are they all those two separate hearings? It depends on the schedule. Sometimes the groups can get together and have a joint public hearing. And sometimes their schedules are such that that's not possible. And they hold two separate public hearings. And what I understand from Northampton and also from reading state law, it's either the entire council that can hold a public hearing or a designated subset of the council such as the CRC that could hold a public hearing. So the other thing we talked about was the, so the zoning subcommittee is already advancing these three zoning bylaw changes that they've discussed with us. One has to do with marijuana buffer. One has to do with the change of the... Voting requirements. Voting requirement for a site plan review. And the third one has to do with supplemental dwelling. So I think that the thought was that this would be a really good test for us to see how a process for holding these hearings or working our way through a zoning bylaw change could work. So these are ones that seem very, not to say small, but sort of understandable. And so I think that there was interest in moving that forward as kind of a trial for us to figure out what our role will be. So Mr. Zomek and I met with the town manager recently and he gave us some guidance about that. And he felt that the town council was going to be, first of all, very busy over the summer continuing to do what you're doing already. Secondly, that you don't have the same schedule over the summer because of people taking vacations and that it might be best to wait until the fall after Labor Day to take up the zoning amendments. So his guidance to us was not to pursue these three zoning amendments in the next month or so, but to really wait until September. In terms of the process that we've been talking about our zoning changes, ideas for zoning changes come from planning and stuff. I guess I always want to make sure that there's a way for residents to come forward, possibly who live in a specific neighborhood or something with an idea for a zoning change. And so how would that get dealt with? So residents are able to come forth with a citizens petition and they need to get signatures from 10 other residents, voting residents, and they can present that to the town council and then the town council would send that to the planning board for a public hearing. Thank you. So we're out of time. Steve, can I just add though, going a little deeper on Pat's question, I think whatever zoning amendments are decided to be brought forth this fall, whether it's the three that have been discussed or others, I think what's important is for us to think about how do we work with the town council to not only, but we're recreating a structure and we're finding new ways to reach people out in your districts. So how do we take the discussion that might happen here with the zoning subcommittee, the CRC, here we sit at 430, not a huge audience. How do we work with you all and the rest of the council members to take the information that we're talking about and the potential changes we're talking about to our community out through your district meetings, special meetings, so that there's more participation by the community. And I think that's something that staff and I have been talking about for a number of years, how do we get more people involved? And we'd look to you for help and guidance and on those issues, but we need to get more people involved because it affects everyone in town. I think one way to get more people involved would be if we could put together and maybe we initiate or work with zoning some amendment or bylaw on the sidewalks, such as we discussed, because people are very interested in that. And the other thing that people are very interested in is that there be some percentage, perhaps even small, but some percentage of apartments in new large buildings that would be marked affordable, maybe with varying definitions of affordable, but some level of affordability. Because those are things that I hear from lots and lots of people, people would get involved and they would come and be involved in it. What is the status of the inclusionary zoning? I mean, that would, any, yeah. So I think the very last act of town meeting was to pass a revised inclusionary zoning, which expanded the definition or the interpretation of special permit. So basically, it used to be interpreted that inclusionary zoning only kicks in if there's a special permit for use. And now it kicks in if there's a special permit for use or certain dimensions, lot coverage, height, that's it. Lot coverage, height over two feet over what you would normally be allowed to do and setbacks would not be included. So setbacks do not count, but height and lot coverage and building coverage would count. Yeah, so it expanded the definition of that. So it's a, it's a baby step, but it's in a, yeah. We're at a closing time. So Dorothy, we had talked about one time holding a retreat for the CRC. How do you all feel? We have so much to talk about. And we have, we have, we have processes, one of the things you brought mentioned, we haven't, we just have so many things to talk about. I think I hope we can get a date together. That's why I wanted to just take a few minutes today to see if we could reach or at least get started towards some idea of a date when we all could come. Yeah, the only thing that I'm concerned about is we're down one member. I know that there's consideration that may be given to going back to the full council to expand the size of this committee. And then the appointment process to designate new members would follow a decision one way or another on that question. So we're sort of in a flex on membership. I think we ought to consider whether it's best to wait until we have identified who will be the committee going forward, but yes, otherwise I agree. Totally agree. I think that in many ways our meetings have been retreats of a sort because we've had kind of open agendas. We haven't had, in other words, we've done a lot of discussion about the master plan, about zoning. So we haven't been, sometimes when you really need a retreat is when all of your work is dealing with other people's business. And in a way we've, I think that leaving a big block of time at our regular meetings where we can have a topic, kind of an open topic, whether it be about process or about what our vision is. We could really begin to sketch out our goals, what we mean by things like impact, how we're gonna make decisions, how we're going to form work teams, things like that. Really the process of this whole thing because right now whatever gets dropped we're kind of doing, but we're not doing. So, I don't know, and two hours, a two hour meeting I don't think is long enough to do all those things. And it wouldn't be a two hour meeting because maybe it would be 45 minutes and that doesn't feel. The other thing is to add time. So to, and actually we've already de facto done that today, but to leave more time. I think the open discussions like we've actually have benefited from are helpful. Sometimes as we struggle to figure out exactly what our role is, sometimes we're talking about everything from the little, not everything's big, but everything from sidewalks to open space, things like that. Well, the thing I do feel concerned about is there's so many ideas and things that we've talked about and things we want to do. And I guess maybe we do need a work plan or homework and I know that some of that's in process, but like there's so many things that were brought up today that we talked about and who is doing the follow up and what kind of follow up. So I, but I do understand Andy's point. We do need to get this committee sized. We need to get the committee firmed up. And I'm just wondering, can't that be done quickly? I mean, okay, so let's see if we can't get, speak to our president and get it done. I just wanted to say that if you as a group and perhaps the town council as well come up with a topic that you want the zoning subcommittee and the planning board to look at, you don't have to have solved the whole thing. So if you want the planning board and zoning subcommittee to look at sidewalks and setbacks, that would be something that you could tell me and then I could tell them and one of you could come and talk to them and we could get that ball rolling. So it doesn't have to be you who draft something. It could be just your idea comes to the zoning subcommittee and the planning board and then we draft something. That sounds like a great idea, but I don't think that diminishes what I see as a need for a retreat. I really like the idea. Anything else? Oh, you wanted to look for a date? We could explore a possible date and then tell our president that we have a date and we need to move ahead. Do you want to look for a date or? I think, yeah, we'll put that, yeah. It's going to be difficult given vacation schedule given the uncertainty of who is going to be finally the members of the committee and given the fact that in September, we already have a retreat in works for the council. So the number of things out there already. In some ways, I'd rather have the, because we are a subset of the whole town council, in some ways, I'd rather ask the president if we could have some part of the whole council retreat to talk about issues that are CRC issues and then maybe a way she wants to organize it anyway, but so a section where each of the committees can have, I can, or maybe there could be part of the retreat where the committees will accept we have overlapping membership. I feel like the idea of retreat is not reverberating with the people here and that's fine, but I think then we need to think about going back to meeting every week. We don't know what we're doing and we have no process. We have no, we've done Lynn's goals and that's an important thing, but what are our priorities? And for me, I'm very concerned that my prejudice is about a certain thing, isn't what directs my investigation of impact. How do we develop neutrality? Those are things that really need to be looked at and that's fine if you don't want to. Well, what about a meeting, adding a meeting, remember we talked about Mr. Zomick and you said you were going to put together quote unquote a syllabus. Once that is done, and I realize that's a task, okay? Once that is done, if we have a meeting where we just talk about that, it's not quite a retreat, but it would be an extra meeting where we could really focus on that. I'm sorry I'm adding to it without being, but one thing I am hearing is that when we have the town council retreat, I think what Pat is pointing out in terms of our internal processes would be relevant to all committees and we could be broken up into different committees when we are in the town council and come up with some of those processes if it can wait that long. And secondly, I think it would be helpful, at least if I was in a committee to start sharing some of these questions that you have, Pat, that you've raised, that how do we deal with this or how are we setting up priorities? Who is looking, like for me, I can only focus on let's say two projects at a time if I want to do real justice. So are there people who are interested in different things that might want to take ownership of everyone's looking at every project, I get it, but there might be two people at least looking at a project, each affordable housing or whatever in economic development. Not everyone looking at everything at the same way, if you can, great, but I know I can't. So it would be helpful to have those kind of conversations who's doing what, what are the processes and stuff. So maybe start by creating a list of what are some of these process questions. So I'm not saying that, but I think, you know, so, but we need to, I think be conscientious about what are the things that we need to look at and when and how are we gonna look at them. Okay. I move that we adjourn this meeting. All in favor raise your hand and say aye. Aye. We are adjourned.